


Not Unbecoming

by Verity_Kindle



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Survivor Guilt, canon will be rudely discarded in favor of something less awful, eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 13:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18739771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verity_Kindle/pseuds/Verity_Kindle
Summary: In one reality, they win. Just one.In countless timelines, they lose and lose and lose again, in varying horror stories. Sometimes half the universe is decimated. Sometimes every living being is wiped out, erased from all of time and existence. That might seem like the worst of all possible worlds.It isn’t.The worst of all worlds is Tony Stark, alone on a silent hunk of rock that had once been the world.





	Not Unbecoming

**Author's Note:**

> So, so many spoilers, so please avert your eyes if offended, dear reader!
> 
> Anyways this is the result of me bawling my eyes out in the movie theater and standing up and declaring “I won’t HAVE this!” and then spending the next week bawling and trying to figure out what the hell to do about it. 
> 
> And now I know, and I’m working on it, and hopefully eventually it will be something of worth.

In one reality, they win. Just one. 

It is a brutal, searing victory, with consequences that ripple outward like sickening waves of loss and injury. Strange knew it all along - how much it would hurt. It is victory, though.

It is the only one. 

In millions of realities, the Avengers never exist. They never should have, anyway. It was only stupid luck and blind chance that ever allowed them to come together, mad it usually didn’t happen. No other group in any reality ever stands a chance against the Mad Titan. 

In countless timelines, they lose and lose and lose again, in varying horror stories. Sometimes half the universe is decimated. Sometimes every living being is wiped out, erased from all of time and existence. That might seem like the worst of all possible worlds.

It isn’t. 

The worst of all worlds is Tony Stark, alone on a silent hunk of rock that had once been the world. 

It is only a few realities over from the aching glory that is the Victory, and somehow that would make it worse, if anyone but Strange had ever known it. 

It went like this - almost an echo of what becomes a familiar song, to the Victorious. Half the universe wiped away in a silent cleansing of horrible efficiency; the Stones destroyed, at great cost, by one who hated with a quiet zeal; a common rat bringing back an ex-con who rightly should have been lost for eternity; a silent picture that made Tony Stark take a stupid, stupid risk. Time travel, wacky shenanigans, and a brief, shining moment where everything looked like it would be all right. 

Tony looked at Strange at the last moment, hope rising as he reveled in the sight of all the dear departed who had come back to join them. Peter was back, the brilliant golden hope who had inspired the entire mad venture, and for just one moment, Tony thought they’d done it. He’d gotten it right, just when it finally mattered, and nothing else would ever be important again in the light of that righteousness.

But Strange shook his head, so slow and sad, and Tony felt the cold certainty leeching away every hope he’d clung to.

It happens in slow motion, in the end. A second Snap, but so much more brutal. He almost stops it - flings himself forward anyway, damning the wizard’s certainty, and almost gets his hand on the stones, almost wrenches victory away from Thanos.

He’s always almost been enough.

They all go silent this time. No last words or farewells, no pleading for help that he cannot provide. Tony watches the world turn to ash around him, and waits numbly for the end. After all, it was always likely to end this way. Stupid to think they’d ever had a chance. Nobody who could do math worth a damn would ever have taken Strange up at those odds, and Tony has always been good at math. (He can’t help but count, watching his own fingers, waiting for it to begin. One, two, three…)

“Stark,” Thanos sighs, sounding weary beyond all the worlds, and almost fondly chiding. “Did you not see? This is how it was always meant to be. I misjudged you, before.”

Tony doesn’t answer. He’s still counting (fifteen, sixteen, seventeen) because if he stops it’ll be real, and they’ll be gone, all of them, Peter and Cap and Bruce and oh god Pepper and Morgan (twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two…)

“I have made an end of it now,” Thanos intones. He drops heavily to the ground beside Tony, who can do little more than breathe harshly and wait for existence to stop. “There will be no undoing of this again. We end this universe in silence.” He cocks his head for a moment, listening to the howling wail of the wind through the empty field of desolation he has wrought. He looks down at Tony then, eyes narrowing in vicious thought. “Except you.”

Tony flexes the fingers of one hand slowly, trying to judge the distance. The stones are still there. If he lets Thanos pontificate, distract himself with his own bullshit deeply enough, there’s still a chance, whatever Strange said.

Strange is ash again, now. Still, he’s been ash for the past five years, and that didn’t put much of a crimp in his style when he came back. Tony can still make this work.

“You, Merchant of Death,” Thanos says, almost respectfully. “You, mechanic. You, protector of Earth. Avenger.” He draws the words out slowly, savoring them. Tony gets a sick taste at the back of his mouth. “You almost undid all of my work. You have no idea what I have done to prepare for this moment.” He pauses, huffs a tiny laugh. “I suppose I don’t really know either, since you rewrote this ending. Does it please you now?” 

“I'm not loving it, no,” Tony spits. “What say we back it up a few rounds and go again? I bet we could really make it pop this time.” He glares up at the giant, who chuckles, just as if they were friends, just as if he hadn’t just murdered all of existence.

“I think not. I am finished - or I will be, in a moment. You see, I have achieved my ends. I find there is little appeal in continuing on, now that my work is finished. I am ready to rest.” His eyes turn cold and bright, now, staring through Tony. “You, though, little human. You broke every rule. You turned the universe inside out to stop me - and you failed.” He gestures around at the ash around them which still swirls and flutters through the air, friend mixed with foe, bird and beast and being all inseparable, now, forever. “You will not rest. You will remember.”

Tony gapes at him, shakes his head. “I don’t-“

“Remember them, Tony Stark,” Thanos says. It is a pronouncement of doom. “Remember every fool who followed you against me, every innocent whose blood is on your hands, every voice that will never be heard again.” He stands with a groan, and Tony changes the variables in his head, watches the stones move a little closer. Just another moment-

“When you die,” Thanos says gently, kindly, “all life dies with you. I hope you remember them well.” He smiles, warm and vicious.

And Thanos dissolves into dust. The gauntlet falls apart. The stones are caught up in some unseen wind that whirls them away in an instant, leaving nothing but Tony Stark, bearing the weight of all the souls of the world.

(Ninety-nine, one hundred, one hundred one, one hundred two…)  
~~~~~

He starts to go insane at once. He’s probably been well on his way there for a long time, but he kind of gets serious about it once he’s checked the data enough times to be sure he didn’t get it wrong - you know, about him being the last living creature on the planet.

More or less, anyway. Thanos seems to have been a bit haphazard in what he got rid of, this time. All the people, yes, and the decent animals. Anything with redeeming values. There are still mosquitoes, though, because of course there damn well are. He sees evidence of life sometimes - plants growing, slime accumulating on wet surfaces - and knows it’s not all gone. He really doesn’t give a damn, though. 

Pepper is gone. Morgan is gone.

He doesn’t go back to the house. He cannot bear to witness that, 

He goes to the lab, of course, because he is Tony Stark, and he doesn’t have a damn clue what to do. There are a few Pymm Particles left. He could go back, one more time. He could try-

But there’s nothing left to try. They gave it their best, and it failed. All of them working together, all the sacrifices and last stands and unselfishness - they had failed. Again. 

They should have given up after the first time. Should have settled down to life in the ruins, mourned their dead, and moved on. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done that enough times already.

He’s talking to himself before the first day is out. 

He talks to his AIs for a while, while the backup power reserves last, and then eventually he powers them down, too. 

The world is very silent. Except for the damn mosquitoes. 

He thinks a lot about suicide. Not melodramatically- he has no energy left for that. Just thinks about it. Sounds nice, pretty much all the time. He wonders what it would be like, not to hear his heartbeat and breath so loudly all the time, the only sounds left in the world. 

He doesn’t get to do that, though, because he’s the last of everything, just as he had always known he would be, and he has to carry all of them with him for as long as he can. Someday he will die, or lose all his memories, one by one, and there will be no-one left to remember the smell of Morgan’s hair, the wry twist of Pepper’s smile, the way Rhodey had eaten his eggs, Happy’s complaints about everything. When he dies, they are gone forever. 

He doesn’t wonder about an afterlife. That is the one solace he lets himself cling to.

When Peter had come back, just for that tiny useless moment, he had babbled on in his usual blessed way - and what Tony chooses to remember is that the kid hadn’t known he was dead. Hadn’t talked of pain and suffering, or waiting, or even seemed to know that time had passed, except what Strange had told him. 

They don’t know they’re dead, he tells himself every day. 

It’s almost consolation.

~~~~~

He keeps notes. Sometimes on ideas for last ditch efforts they might have tried, useless though that is now, or on things he might have built if he were anything but a library for the memories of the dead, now. Mostly, he tries to remember. He fills pages and books with things he remembers people saying and doing, and how they had looked and sounded. It’s not all profound and wonderful, either, because they hadn’t been profound and wonderful. 

They had been human (well, most of them) and alive and idiotic and noble and wonderful and selfish and flawed and so, so vulnerable, and now they are the ashes that cover every inch of the world, that deaden his footfalls and blacken his hands, and he cannot remember them all. Even if the computers still worked, and he could load in every memory he had, every bit of recorded human history, it would be the tiniest fraction of what had been lost. He is a walking cemetery, perched atop a mountain of death, and not one damn bit of it is going to matter much longer in the grand scheme of things.

~~~~~

It is one year, eight months, two weeks, and four days after the Destruction. He hates that this is how he counts time now, but it’s pointless to think of it any other way. What will years matter now? There’s nothing left to count toward, and only one thing that matters enough to count away from. He’s walking through the ruins of a city whose name he doesn’t care to remember; what did they matter? All of them are the same to him, now. Survival is easy anywhere he goes - no competition for the resources humanity left behind - but he travels, trying to take it what they left behind, trying to remember humanity for itself. 

There’s no sound except the wind and the gods-damned mosquitoes. Just goes to show the irony of it all, that mosquitoes will inherit the earth. He hopes their gruesome evolved descendants will someday learn of the race that walked the earth before they rose. It’s almost amusing, thinking of little mosquito children studying humans in school, obsessing over their remains like humans had once done for the dinosaurs. He has to find amusement where he can, now.

He turns a corner, and freezes in shock, because there, life-sized and filthy and covered in minor injuries, is Peter Parker.

Peter, who he saw dissolve into dust not once, but twice. 

Peter, who he broke all the rules of the universe for. Who he damned the world to destruction for. 

Tony sighs and raises an eyebrow, pushing up the glasses he wears all the time now. “I guess I was bound to go crazy sooner or later,” he says aloud (sometimes he just needs to hear himself speak or he’ll absolutely lose it, five billion four, five billion five, five billion six) 

“Mr. Stark?”

It’s the first voice he’s heard but his own in more than a year, and damn, he’s forgotten, he was supposed to remember, but he’s forgotten how damn young the kid had sounded, how warm another human voice was in the ear, how it was to hear something other than what his own brain had produced. 

He has already forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> Update coming very soon! Pinky swear, darlings. Hope you will want to read more!


End file.
